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Lana Del Rey contains Americana multitudes: a New York state-raised, Los Angeles-myth maker who recently settled down in Louisiana; a Tumblr poet laureate turned great American songwriter; a woman who put a hex on Donald Trump in 2017 and declared herself “not a feminist” a few years later.
Her new single, “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter” is a love song and a horror film, scored by eerie strings and fraught arpeggios. The first single from her tenth studio album, Stove, is whispered with such tenderness that any lingering unease suffocates within Del Rey’s rose-colored love bubble.
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Like much of Del Rey’s work, “White Feather” toes an uncomfortable line between adoration and submission. The poetically wrought ode to husband-and-alligator-tour-guide Jeremy Dufrene has a push-pull dynamic. Sometimes, their union feels deliciously rebellious and counter-culture like it’s them and their domestic bliss against the world: “Likes to keep me cool in the hot breeze summer / Likes to push me on this green John Deere mower.” At other times, Del Rey is just glorifying the toils of being a wife: “I know it's strange to see me cooking for my husband” and “I love my daddy, of course, we're still together.”
The song’s tongue-in-cheek trad-wifery recalls the traditionalist mindset of her 2020 “question for the culture” post which caught serious backlash for the singer’s tone-deaf invocation of Black artists like Doja Cat, Cardi B and Kehlani. The crux of the note was that Del Rey was tired of being criticized for “glamoriz[ing] abuse” in her music. “There has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me,” she wrote. “The kind of woman who says no but men hear yes - the kind of women who are slated mercilessly for being authentic, delicate selves.” Though it was somewhat unsettling to see Del Rey so explicitly aligned herself with a traditionalist’s ideal of femininity, it offered meaningful insight into her worldview.
Now seemingly a happily kept woman, Del Rey has turned that post into a song, doubling down on the trad fantasy that’s become her real life. She’s in Louisiana, sporting debutante curls and wearing Ralph Lauren. She’s American dreaming, an uncomfortable thing to glorify especially in 2026. But she’s also writing some of her most surprising, enchanting music since Norman Fucking Rockwell, even if it scares me.
